SES New York: Social Media & Why It Matters (Part 2)
This is part 2 of a series of posts. This covers the second speaker of the event of the event, Jennifer Laycock
Jen’s Introduction: There’s a conversation going on, you need to join in. These people influence the links that come in. Make sure to drill in the impact of the conversation and what it means to your company.
Image Sharing
“Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” – Walt Disney
Flickr
Flickr is doing very well for image search. Powerful sites like Technorati use Flickr as their default image search. Furthermore, Yahoo weighs Flickr images very heavily. Even on Google, you’ll see images searches where the majority of results are from Flickr. Flickr is an engaged community who is passionate enough about the topic that they post pictures.
Flickr Groups
There are special groups for just about anything you could think of (e.g. edible gardening). As a company, this offers you the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert. This lets you sell products through the credibility that you establish rather than a hard sell.
Bento box
As an example, Jen showed pictures of Bento Boxes which are specially organized lunch boxes full of different types of food. Links can be made to blog posts where directions for the food can be found. The blog also happens to be on a site that sells Bento boxes. This type of participation sets up a soft sell for products and helps build a company’s reputation.
Flickr Features
Flickr lets you email pictures straight from your camera phone. You can join or create topics especially for events. You can publish direct from Flickr to most blogs. Flickr is great with privacy options. Flickr also has RSS feeds so you can be sure when to follow up on comments.
Recommendation: Get a Pro account for ($25/year). Subscribe to the comments on your pictures and respond.
Learn the Flickr Tools
A collection of tools for Flickr can be found at http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/03/great-flickr-tools-collection/.
Twitter is micro blogging. It’s purposefully kept to 140 characters and answers the question: What are you doing?
Twitter for Networking
Twitter is networking made simple because it lets you follow your friend’s friends. Twitter makes it very easy to break in to the conversation. It’s the acceptable way to eavesdrop on conversations and you can do so on both sides.
Twitter is a News Source
Twitter as a news source: a PBS station in San Diego Twitters breaking news. The short format facilitates quick, timely messages.
The Power of the Retweet
Someone might retwitter a message to their friends. When used correctly, sites can find as high of a number of people coming from twitter as from other social networking sites.
Recap: Twitter is a chance to expand your network.
- It’s not stalking, it’s observing.
- It’s a powerful traffic source.
- Instant feedback
- Absolutely free
- Limited only by your creativity.
Be sure to see these other posts from this series:
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